Few days back, looked like our English cousins had the race all sewn up, which always takes the fun out of it, for who can argue with British craftsmanship or whatever. We used to have a “Yarn from England” store in the middle of town when I was a boy, and colonial-minded moms and widows flocked there, continually, learning the loom and packing Union Jack style shopping bags to the very brim—and tight—with yarn made in Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, all fleecy colors and fuzzy. These shoppers scorned the slick, shoelacelike yarn made indigenously by Americans and I think they all moved to Hollywood and became members of the Academy, for every year it’s “Daniel Day Lewis is a shoo-in.” Well, the Oscar races usually heat up about a week before when people realize—or is it hope, hope beyond reason—that maybe Daniel Day Lewis doesn’t have it all sewn up necessarily. People begin thinking about that milkshake speech he gives in There Will Be Blood and rethinking and mumbling, take away that titanic Cotton Mather bluster and it’s sort of thin.

Besides which, I’ve never really thought out my policy for whether or not stars should be allowed to get more than one Academy Award. I don’t know, what’s your opinion? Commonsense says that, if Daniel Day Lewis (DDL) gives the best performance every year, then he should be entitled to as many Oscars as he can carry home. And yet don’t they have a hall of fame rule for just this sort of case when one brilliant ham ties up the competition year after year after year? Apparently not or they wouldn’t keep nominating Jack Nicholson I guess. Maybe I’m thinking of the Best Dressed List, a far more cleverly constituted organization, which after you win three or four times, like I would know, you get kicked upstairs and enshrined in a beam of permanent glamour—like the old Barbie costume “Solo in the Spotlight.” But then again I hate when they “waste” an Oscar by giving it to someone who’s not a star, who got it just by a fluke. Giving it to Louise Fletcher was an early lesson for me. It’s almost as if the academy resents stars and wants their precious awards to go only to Brits and flukes.